U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

WASHINGTON, DC – Kenneth Kwak, 34, of Chantilly, Va., was
sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to five months in
prison followed by five months of home confinement, based upon Kwak’s
conviction for gaining unauthorized access to and obtaining information
from a Department of Education computer system, the Department of Justice
announced today.

Kwak’s sentence results from his March 2006 guilty plea to one count
of intentionally gaining unauthorized access to a government computer
and thereby obtaining information. In his plea, Kwak, who had been working
in an office responsible for ensuring the security of Department of Education
computer systems, admitted that he had placed software on a supervisor's
computer which enabled him to access the computer’s storage at will. He
later used that access on numerous occasions to view his supervisor’s
intra-office and Internet email as well as his other Internet activity
and communications; Kwak then shared this information with others in his
office.

As part of today’s sentence, Judge Lamberth also ordered Kwak to pay
restitution to the U.S. government in the amount of $40,000 and serve
a three-year term of supervised release. The five months of home confinement
with electronic monitoring was ordered as a special condition of this
term of supervised release.

The matter was investigated by the Computer Crime Investigations Division
of the Department of Education Inspector General’s Office. The case was
prosecuted by Senior Counsel William Yurek, cross-designated as a Special
Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District
of Columbia, with assistance by Trial Attorney Howard Cox, both of the
Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division.
The prosecution was part of the “zero-tolerance policy” recently adopted
by the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding intrusions into U.S. government
computer systems.